grace and handfuls of purpose in our lives

I sit in the quiet of my study with the precious Word of God open before me. His Word is so amazing. So rich. So powerful. Too many times I have picked it up and read it without much thought of just how precious it is. It is holy. It is pure. It is the voice of God in writing. As I begin my morning study time, I purpose in my heart to never pick it up nonchalantly again.

I open the holy scriptures and He begins speaking to me about grace. We are the object of God's amazing grace. Unmerited. Undeserved. Unending. Grace that is dispensed at just the right time. And in just the right amount. And in just the right way. Daily manna that is sent from heaven from the sweet Hands of our father. Handfuls of purpose dropped in our path for us to glean.

His Word alone is evidence of His grace in our lives. We can commune with Him at any time. He can speak to us through the scriptures each time we open the Word. Grace upon grace with each page we turn. Each word that we read. Amazing...

His provision is evidence of His grace in our lives. He provides in all things. For all things. Through all things. Whether He provides comfort during times of grief or bestows peace to our fearful hearts, His grace reigns. He provides rest for the weary. Healing for the wounded. New mercies for the repentant heart.

We find grace in the innermost essence of who God is. The rescuer. The preserver. The lover of our souls.

There is grace in the miraculous healing of a granddaughter. The whispered 'I love you's' while tucking in sweet grandchildren at night. A tearful phone call from a child needing prayer or a grandchild just needing her Nana.

There is grace in the emergency room as a grandmother cradles her oldest grandchild and softly petitions a loving God to reach down and minister peace and healing. And He does.

There is grace in the cleft of the rock where our Father has so loving placed us. In that cleft, He administers grace for the moment. Handfuls of purpose for the taking. In that cleft, we find the faithful and loving Hand of a compassionate God.

Deep in the Word of God, we tap into the ever flowing stream of grace. The knowledge of the Holy just waiting to captivate our hearts and minister to our spirits. To overwhelm and astound us. To draw us closer to the One who gives grace and who is grace.

His Word gives us life. His Word IS life. Let's treasure it. Revere it. Hide it in our hearts.

Thank you, Lord, for your amazing and precious Word. May we treat it with the respect and reverence that it so deserves. May we pick it up with trembling and excitement over what we will encounter in the pages we read. Thank you for your generous grace and your abundant Handfuls of purpose in our lives. 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

May the sweetness of our Lord and the power of His presence overwhelm you this amazing Christmas season!

the past, present and future

As I sit tonight and reflect about the past year, and think about the last 11 days that will bring 2011 to completion, I am filled with a heart of joy and thankfulness. This past year has brought many smiles and much laughter. We have celebrated  new birth and another beginning of new life. We have shed some tears of joy and also some tears of despair, but God has been faithful to wipe away those tears and replace them with sweet peace and comfort. We have had times of uncertainty and times of divine affirmation. We have experienced the sweetness of God's grace and the awesome and mighty power of His healing Hand. 

I can look back over the past 12 months and see how God has been doing a work in my life. Increasing my hunger for Him. Drawing my heart for more knowledge of Him. Generously dispensing grace that I am so undeserving of. Growing my faith. Showing me that I can only flourish when I am totally dependent on Him.

He has shown me how to 'be still' in Him. How to rest in His promises. How to listen when He speaks and then to hold on to the Word that He gives me. He has shown me how to have a believing heart and has made me realize that He wants to give us good things! I have seen Him work and experienced Him in ways that I could never have imagined. I have felt His presence like never before and heard His voice with a new clarity. 

It's been a year of growing and learning. A year of searching and finding. A year of longing for more of my Savior. A year of miracles. And encounters. And life-changing revelations of the soul. 

As I think about the next year, there are many things that I hope to accomplish. I truly desire to continue to grow closer to my Lord every day. I long to be saturated in His love and enthralled with His glory.  I want to want Him with a new expectancy. I pray that I approach the Holy scriptures with more reverence and appreciate the Sovereignty of them with a deeper respect. 

May I never take the Word lightly but revere it and desire to obey it like never before. I pray that God continue to mold me and make me into His likeness. That He can use me for His glory, for His kingdom and for His purpose.  May I be passionate in my pursuit of Jesus and determined in my quest for holiness. May I be a true seeker of God.

His goodness overwhelms me and I stand in awe of who He is and what He does. May His name always astound me and fill me with wonder. As He reaches down and touches my life anew, I pray that He leaves His fingerprints all over me. I want to be real. Authentic. I want to be new and different. Changed forever. I want to be His. 

Looking forward and never glancing back as to what might have been, I strive to press on toward the finish line. No regrets, only resolutions for a new year. New mercies. A new intimacy with God. A new encounter with Jesus.  May I celebrate His birth every day of my life. 

"Today, a Savior, who is Messiah the Lord, was born for you

in the city of David" - Luke 2:11

Joy is..

There are so many things that bring joy to my life.  I have joy because I have HOPE in my Lord and Savior. Everything that I have and everything that I am is only because of the abundant grace and mercy of Jesus. That alone brings me much joy and happiness.

I am filled with joy when I see these ornaments on my tree each year. 

I was certainly filled with joy as I watched my grandchildren decorate my tree last Sunday. It only took them about 5 minutes to get it done, but I think they did a great job. These sweet babies bring me much joy.

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Joy is seeing this precious face as this little angel was waking up from a nap after church.

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Joy is a little girl in a hot pink zebra print hat that she picked out herself. Especially when the little girl is a constant reminder of God's healing power. Thank you, Lord, for healing my sweet Mercie. I will praise you every day of my life and testify of your goodness as long as I have breath.

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Joy is taking 2 sweet boys to the park and taking lots of pictures of them while they play.

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Joy is my 1000 gifts journal. It has been so rewarding to record my daily blessings and be reminded of just how generous my God is in all things. As I near 1000 gifts, I am determined to keep going and be ever mindful of the many blessings I receive every day of my life. 

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Joy is spending time with Mikaela, Eli, Mercie and Silas. I love being a Nana and I love being loved by my sweet grandbabies!

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Joy is Silas in his little teddy bear hat.

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Joy is the Word of God. There is nothing as satisfying as digging into His precious Holy scriptures. There is life in the pages of God's Word.  There is unending treasure to be found deep inside the inspired words of the bible. When we read His Word, He speaks to our hearts. We learn. We grow. We fall more in love with our Savior. 

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Joy is Laylah Beth. 

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Joy is my baby girl loving on her baby girl.

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Joy is seeing the smile on this precious face. And the dimples...

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Joy is brothers....

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Joy is cousins...

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Joy is the Lord. Joy is the promise of His Word. The Truth of who He is. The faithfulness of our Father. The abundance of His mercy and grace. The magnitude of His love.  Joy is Jesus.

"And my soul shall be joyful in the LORD; 

it shall rejoice in His salvation"

(Psalms 35:9)

do we recognize Him?

The disciples had just witnessed the miracle of Jesus feeding more than 5000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 small fish. They didn't just hear about it. They didn't just witness it. They experienced it.

Yet, just a short time later, they fail to recognize Jesus as He walks on the water toward them. They had literally just spent many days with Him. Walking with Him. Journeying side-by-side with the Lord as He ministered to the sick and hurting. Watching Him perform miracles and wonders. They had been in close fellowship with the Lord. They had just been in His presence. But then at a time when they needed Him, they didn't see Him for who He was.

Are we like that at times? We spend time with our Lord. We commune with Him and we minister in His name. Then He does something astounding in our lives and we fail to realized, "That's Him". Jesus performs miracles in our midst and we fail to see. He is walking on the water and we can't see past our own preoccupations with ourselves to see our Savior at work.

We study His Word yet don't cling to His promises therein.

We sing about His marvelous grace and sweet mercy yet neglect to see it applied so generously to us day after day.

We seek His face but don't stay face-down long enough to find it.

We overlook His goodness. We take for granted His love. We want to know Him but aren't taking the time to make it happen. 

We forget who He is. And what He does. We seem to think that God is unaffected by our cries for mercy and deliverance. But our God is a God who feels! Praise His holy name!

He is a God who wants to know us. He craves intimacy with us. He desires for us to long for Him. But the only way that we will encounter such a rich relationship with God is to spend time with Him. We will never recognize Him in the ordinary until we have experienced Him in the extraordinary. Our lives must be based on  an intimate and personal relationship with Christ. We must stay in the Word and on our faces to keep ourselves aware of Him in all things.

Our God is greater and higher than all else. He is love. He is mercy. He is grace. He is everything.

We serve a God who hears our prayers. He sees our tears. He feels our despair. He covers. He heals. He restores. Jesus is faithful, abundant and true. When we seek Him and earnestly search for Him with all of our hearts, we will find Him. We will look up and see Him walking on the water toward us and say, "It's Jesus... I knew He would come..."

this journey of faith....

This past month has been such an amazing journey in growing my faith. November 6, 2011 is a day that I will never forget and I pray that God will keep it burned in my mind for all time as a reminder of His greatness and His power and His sweet goodness. That is the day that He reached down from heaven and placed His gentle healing hands upon my sweet granddaughter, Mercie, and made her whole. It was a day that I held a miracle in my arms as I cried out to Him for mercy on my sweet girl.

 Many times during this past 4 weeks, God has had to whisper the words 'remember' in my ear. When my flesh allows the dark shadow of fear to creep into my mind, He takes me back to that day when I knew that something amazing had just happened. I knew that He had healed her. I felt it. The power that surged through her little body was unmistakable. And I knew.

I have praised my Savior every day for her healing. I am still in awe of Him and His goodness. I continue to stand on the promise of His Word and to lean on what I know to be true. I have no doubt what He did in her little life and I am humbled by it daily.  My flesh is still so weak, but everyday I pore over the Holy scriptures desiring to gain strength from them. I search for truth and revelation. I seek a fresh anointing of knowledge and discernment.  

I have been so disappointed in myself as I have so often lapsed into a state of mind bordering on unbelief, but every time God has shown me such grace and patience. He has been right there to quicken my thoughts to the truth of who He is. And the truth of what He does. And then I wonder why I would ever doubt. Why would I  counter what I know to be the work of His Sovereign and Divine will with doubt. Why would I even entertain thoughts of fear. But then I realize that of my own depravity and weakness of flesh, I can do nothing but that.  And that only through the power of the sweet Holy Spirit, can I walk boldly in my faith. I can only draw strength from the giver of this strength. My Savior. My Lord. My Rock. My Deliverer. Only through Him and His precious power and generous dispensing of grace can I function in this life. But because of who He is, I can KNOW. I can BELIEVE. I can rest in the promise of what I know to be TRUTH. 

I go back to the book of Ezekiel and focus on the words that God spoke to the dry bones. Over and over I repeat these words until they become part of me. Until they soak way down into the marrow of my bones and fill me to overflowing with a deepening knowledge of the Holy. 

".... and you shall know that I AM the LORD."

(Ezekiel 37:6)

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I love it when Mikaela stays with me. She is such a precious and sweet young lady with a heart for God. She is growing up way too fast and she loves to cook! She made this delicious pecan pie before church a few weeks ago when she spent the night with me and her Papa.

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She loves her little cousin Laylah Beth. She is so gentle and sweet with her. I love my Mikaela.

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I love the many faces of Eli. He is a laugh a minute and can melt my heart in about 2 seconds.

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This face makes me smile. He is such a sweet and amazing little boy.

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Eli loves his big sister, Mikaela. They have always been good friends and I pray that they will love each other like that always.

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I love my sweet Mercie. She brings much joy to the world with her sweet personality. She is a Nana's girl and there is nothing as precious as her little arms wrapped tightly around my neck and hearing her say, "I love you so much Nana!"

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Oh, how I love this little miracle girl. 

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I love my sweet Silas. He is such a mama's boy, but loves his Nana too! He has the sweetest little smile that makes his whole face light up.

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I loved the way Silas and Mercie were so intently watching their newest little cousin Laylah the other day. 

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I love my little Bryton. He is so sweet with his little sister and he is such a tender-hearted little fella. He talks about God all the time and is a real deep thinker for a 4 year old!

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I love my Sawyer. He is still a baby in some ways, but in others he is wanting to be like his big brother. He has a sweet voice that can make me want to give him anything! 

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I love my newest little grandbaby. Such a sweet little delicate girl with a smile that has already stolen my heart.

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Thank you, Lord, for blessing me for now with these. You have given me much more than I deserve and I love you with all of my heart. I will strive every day of my life to live worthy of my calling and to bring nothing but glory and honor to your Name.